| |
|
February Links
General Info
Member Info
|
|  |
From Mensagenda - May 2003
MP3: MT Threat
by Tim Goetsch
Pity the poor recording industry. Sales
of music CDs are down 20 percent over
the past two years. Could it be that the
industry has lost touch with its customers?
You might think so, but industry
leaders say otherwise. According to them,
the problem is music piracy.
There are countless sites on the
Internet where you can download music
for free. Mighty generous, you say. Thing
is, you’re supposed to pay for this stuff.
Most of these Web sites are operating
illegally, and they pop up faster than they
can be shut down. The music industry
says that these downloads are ruining
their business.
Me? I’m not so sure.
I agree that music piracy is costing the
music industry money. What I disagree
with is the scale and newness of the problem.
There’s no guarantee that music pirates
would buy if they couldn’t pirate. In
earlier times, they might have gone to
friends’ houses to copy from vinyl to
cassette, or would have gone without.
The Internet makes pirating easier
and more common. But the idea that it is
ruining the industry can be refuted with
two words: classical music. It’s not just
popular music that has been hit; the whole
music industry is hurting economically;
classical music, too.
The most commonly used format for
downloading music is MP3, because it
uses small files that download quickly
over the Internet. Thing is, “small file” is
another way of saying “less information,”
and that translates to lowered sound quality.
Classical music fans are notorious for
their love of good sound quality. They
want to hear the musicians breathing.
MP3 is not an option.
There are other factors at work here.
Remember those heady days when CDs
were new? The sound quality was great,
the disk was less likely to scratch than
vinyl, everyone knew it was the coming
thing, and they cost $14.00 to $20.00. A
little expensive maybe, but you didn’t
have much choice. Nowadays people can
record their own CDs, and you can buy
blank CDs in bulk for less than the price of
a similar number of postage stamps. Yet a
recently issued music CD will still set you
back $14.00 to $20.00. It’s one thing to
suspect you’re being ripped off; it’s another
thing to know it for a fact. Even if
you don’t take up pirating, you’re going to
think twice about buying another prerecorded
CD.
We are also seeing a fundamental
change in the entertainment industry. For
a certain price, you can buy a CD of the
music used in a movie. For four or six
dollars more, you can buy the movie
itself, plus a documentary of the making
of the movie, plus bloopers and outtakes,
plus a secondary audio track, to be played
concurrently with the movie, in which the
director explains how he set up each shot.
DVDs are the flavor of the month for
people who like both technology and entertainment.
You get more for your money
than you do with CDs.
That’s not the only way they compete.
I suspect that people’s music collections are
starting to mature. People have been buying
CDs for about two decades, and they
weren’t just buying new music. In the early
days, it made the news when famous albums
from the ’60s and ’70s were reissued
on CD. People bought like crazy to replace
their fragile vinyl records. The music industry
thought it would last forever, but it
had to slow down sometime.
Change “vinyl” to “VHS,” “music” to
“movies,” and “CD” to “DVD,” and you
have what’s happening now. Once the
feeding frenzy ends, maybe people will
go back to spending discretionary income
on CDs. Or maybe they’ll buy some other
new technology. We’ll see.
Let’s also give a nod to that old cliché
“a poor economy.” The recording
industry’s problems started before the
current economic downturn, but recession
is certainly reducing their options.
None of the above is necessarily fatal
to the music industry. It may be a tough
row to hoe, but good management can
deal with hard times. Problem is, the
people running the industry are a bunch
of losers.
Somebody had to say it.
If I produced a product that was stolen
using a process comparable to MP3, I
would put out a press release saying something
like, “I am upset that people would
steal my intellectual property, but once
people realize they are getting an inferior
product, they will come back.” Then I’d
lower pricing.
The industry, however, has a different
reaction. “Pirates! Gasp! Don’t listen
to that! Call the lawyers! Boo hoo!”
Missing from the mix is a discussion of
quality. That comes across as a big ol’
Freudian slip. When music executives
concede that their own music can’t compete
with a substandard imitation of
itself, then they are admitting that pop
music, especially rock, sucks. They
would never admit it out loud, but the
people who sell it know it’s true.
Last year’s Grammy winner for best
album was the soundtrack from the movie
Oh Brother Where Art Thou? That amounted
to a wake-up call, a challenge to break out
of the pop music mold and try something
else, maybe bluegrass and old-timey music
like they had in the movie, or any one
of the thousands of other musical styles
that there are in the world. But the music
industry is stuck in the rock-rap-country
rut, and everything else is a specialty
market that isn’t taken seriously. Instead
of innovating, they try litigating. Since
the wheels of justice turn slowly, there’s
no way that approach can keep up with
the problem, even if it worked.
|
|
